Painted Ponies
by quotient
Summary: Life goes on. Post AHBL pt.2


**Disclaimer:** Not mine, don't sue

**Author's Note:** I wrote a happy ending. Go me.

**Painted Ponies **

_And the seasons, they go round and round, _

_and the painted ponies go up and down. _

_We're captive on the carousel of time. _

_We can't return, _

_Can only look behind from where we came _

_And go 'round and 'round in the circle game._

--_Circle Game_ by Joni Mitchell

Sometimes, Dean drives all the way out to the most deserted crossroads he knows and just sits for hours in the middle. He tried, once, to call the demon, but nothing came. He accepts that it was one trick too many, even if he didn't know of the second one at the time. If he were it, he wouldn't have come either.

It makes him think of Sam, but there's not much that doesn't, so it's not better or worse than a regular day driving around, looking for something to hunt. Mostly, though, Dean's stuck on the irony that no matter how much he tries, someone always dies for him, and not even selling his soul changed that.

* * *

Bobby calls him. "There's a poltergeist that needs taking care of in Green, Ohio." Dean waits for him to finish. "For a friend of mine."

"Sure," Dean says. "Sure."

* * *

He follows the directions to a tiny, ill-kept house off the main road. A woman stands up as he pulls into the driveway that doubles as a front yard.

She sticks her hand out to him. It's small, but the grip is firm. "Shelley," she says.

"Dean."

"I know." Of course she does. Bobby already told her. "Think you can handle it?" She looks him up and down shrewdly and he knows she's seeing a guy in worn-jeans and biker boots instead of a professional.

"'Course."

"By the end of the day?"

He shrugs. Making guarantees isn't his forte. He's more familiar with Murphy's Law or the rule of wishes.

"I need it done by the end of the day." She grabs a backpack from its resting place next to the deteriorating porch steps. One of the zippers is broken. "Before I pick up my daughter."

"Oh." He wants to ask why they don't go to a motel but figures there's always a reason.

"I gotta go."

"Sure," he says. "Yeah, sure. Go."

She throws the bag over her shoulder as she walks away. Dean drags his attention back to the house.

* * *

Her daughter, Bethany, is a sullen six-year-old with tired, sad eyes. Dean crouches, stiffly thanks to some recently sustained injuries, down to introduce himself. She doesn't smile, just huddles back into her mother's leg. Her face turns toward the ground. He feels a small pang of familiarity and for a moment there's another pudgy six-year-old superimposed on the girl. Dean blinks and the image is gone.

Shelley doesn't offer excuses for her daughter's attitude. She nods towards the house. "Come on, I owe you dinner."

The interior of the house looks a little worse for wear. Although he'd tried to clean up the mess, poltergeists are violent fuckers, throw whatever's handy. Especially if it's heavy. Shelley doesn't say anything but he can see what she's thinking in the way her lips thin.

She sends Bethany to the bathroom to get cleaned up while she starts pulling dinner fixings out of the fridge. The kid doesn't complain, doesn't really seem to acknowledge the instructions and Dean feels sorry for the listless girl.

"Sweet kid," he says when he's sure Bethany's out of earshot. He takes the tomatoes shoved into his hands and automatically moves to wash them.

Shelley nods. "Her father left us for some cunt in Akron. Hit her pretty hard."

"Oh."

The sound of the knife chopping carrots gets louder in the resulting silence.

* * *

Dinner is a quiet affair. Bethany pushes her food around her plate while her mother asks her about her day. Dean can see the concern eating away at Shelley as she only gets monosyllabic answers in return for her efforts. He thinks about what Shelley told him and wonders if there's more to the story.

Afterwards, Shelley says, "You can have the couch. I don't have anymore room."

He's tempted to tell her that the couch is more than some people have offered him, but something tells him it's not the right thing to say. It's comfortable and he finds himself dozing to the sound of Shelley's gentle murmurings to her daughter.

He sleeps deeply that night. When he wakes up the next morning, the sun is high in the sky. A glance at his watch says it's well past eleven. A quick look in the kitchen reveals a note.

_Gone to work, food in fridge_

--Shelley

He steals an apple, grabs his keys but ends up at a hardware store instead of on the highway. It's not as hard as he thought it would be to fill in holes in the plaster. The real challenge, he realizes when he's done, will be matching paint colours. That will take another few days to figure out.

Shelley is surprised to see him when she gets back. Looking at her, he can see the dark bags under her eyes, the premature lines on her face.

"Thought you were leaving."

Dean shrugs, "Needed to finish cleaning up."

"Didn't have to worry about that." Her voice is hesitant. "You've already done more than enough…"

He waves her words away, "S'no problem."

* * *

Bethany has night-terrors, Dean learns. Shelley sits through them with her every night. For her school lunches, Shelley has to cut off the crusts before cutting the sandwich diagonally. When she gets home, Bethany always goes to clean up first thing. Otherwise, the kid is quiet and unassuming and Dean can see just how much Shelley loves her.

Sam, Dean thinks, would have never gone to Stanford if he'd grown up knowing about the Roadhouse network. It's still strange to him that John never mentioned it. Bill Harvelle was no excuse because they had to know each other a little while to go hunting together. What Sam didn't like is that they never got to play normal but most of the hunters they met, that Dean still meets, have houses, families, pets.

John used to run things like they were in the military. Dean suspects that the isolation might've been meant to breed loyalty, but deep inside, that doesn't feel right. There were reasons for their Dad's decisions, but just like Sam's plan to free Dean from his deal, they're a mystery. Dean doesn't resent it, though. Maybe Sam would have stayed, or maybe Dean could have gone to college, but if that had happened, Dean knows, deep down inside, that they never would have been who they were and something tells him that makes all the difference.

He spends the days finding the right paint colours so that the holes he fixed no longer stand out. After that's done, he starts on the roof because he can't stand the way some of the shingles are falling. Then it's the back screen door that doesn't close properly. In the kitchen, the cupboard doorknobs are loose.

Shelley chops carrots, says, "I don't need this. I can't pay you."

"You don't have to pay me," he says and regrets it immediately.

"We do fine on our own." She meets his eyes. "We don't need your charity."

"It's not charity."

"What is it, then?"

He doesn't know what's worse, the silence he keeps, or the fact that the word _pity_ comes to mind.

* * *

There's a chupacabra in Austin. He packs his bags with Bethany watching from the kitchen. Shelley waves from the front porch as he pulls out of the driveway.

He was at her place for two weeks, and already he can say her couch is better than most motel beds. The hunt in Austin is quick and easy like they've all become. Time in-between it and the next stretches out interminably. There will always be evil to hunt, he'd told Sam once. It's too bad the mystery has all but gone out of it.

By the time he makes it to his destination, pulling into Bobby's driveway is a relief rather than a necessity.

"Gotta beer?" He asks as he steps through the open door.

Bobby gives him a look. "Don't I always have beer?"

There are a few new vehicles out in the yard. Bobby offers him free reign, whatever he wants to work on. Dean settles on a Mazda 626 because it's in the worst shape. Out in the hot sun for several hours, tools clutched in his sweaty hands, he realizes that as much as he's missed this, it just doesn't work for him anymore.

"Didn't think you'd be out on the road quite so soon." Bobby says, casually that evening as they sit together on his front porch gazing out at nothing in particular.

Dean shrugs, "What else would I do?"

"I remember a time when that woulda gotten under your skin."

"Must be getting more laid-back in my old age."

Bobby laughs, but it's without humour. "You ain't old, Dean. You still got a whole helluva lot out in front of ya."

Dean sips his beer. "Whose fault is that?"

"Gotta pull your head out of your ass. Understand—"

"What, Bobby? That I'm still alive?"

Bobby's lips thin, "Exactly." He sighs and it's full of anger and pity and everything in-between. "Is this what Sam would want for you?"

What Sam wanted for Dean was normal. Funny how in the end, all they wanted was the same thing.

"I'm supposed to be dead."

"Thought you didn't think like that," Bobby says, bemused.

"Like what?" Dean asks, suddenly tired.

Bobby shrugs, "Like that things are _supposed_ to be a certain way."

* * *

Morning is when he leaves with Bobby's newspaper tossed in the backseat because he doesn't want to spend any pocket change on a paper of his own. Bobby stands on the porch looking all the world like he never left his spot from the night before. He gives Dean the finger for taking his paper but doesn't appear to have the energy to chase after him.

Sam used to talk a lot about destiny. There was his own dark future waiting just beyond the horizon, keeping him up at night. Dean listened, but never had the same faith Sam had. Destiny was for other people, not for him.

_Like that things are _supposed_ to be a certain way_

"I should be dead," Dean says, but it's amazing how weak that conviction becomes after years of repeating it.

Sam had also seen the future, but how many times had they changed that?

"I should be dead," he says again and it feels like the last time.

* * *

Shelley's sitting on the front porch watching Bethany play with her dolls. She looks unsurprised when Dean stops the car on the curb.

"Bethany saw you coming," she says as Dean gets out of the car.

"Yeah?" Dean asks, more surprised at how unsurprised he is. He looks at the girl. She turns her face to the ground but he catches a glimpse of a smile.

"She's always right," Shelley tells him, reaching out to ruffle her daughter's hair.

He sleeps on the couch that night, one hand shoved under his pillow like every other night for the past twenty-eight years.

* * *

Sometimes, Dean drives out to the most out of the way crossroads he can find and sits there for hours. He counts the petals on near-by flowers, or just shuts his eyes and listens to the wind. It makes him think of Sam, but so does Bethany sitting at the kitchen table working on her homework, waking up at night screaming in terror, or holding a knife in her hand like it's the most natural thing in the world, so it doesn't make things better or worse.

These days, when he finally stands, back and legs cramping so much more than they used to, Dean doesn't find himself thinking of borrowed time or deals gone bad. Instead he thinks about the long drive back to Green, Ohio and how even these trips are getting to be too far. Then he brushes the dirt off his pants, gets in the car, and goes home.


End file.
